Soon a $100 Drone Will Do Your Bidding

A technology start up called Drones for Peace, which is currently working its way through the MassChallenge start up accelerator, wants to offer civilians the same military technology used to carry out missions from remote locations. "This first $100 drone is meant for general use. 'We are engineers who were working in the military UAV space for awhile. We wanted to a create an aerial surveillance aircraft that was cheap enough that it would be accessible to everyone,' says cofounder James Peverill." The first model is expected to cost about $250, with prices coming down over time.

What's the Big Idea?

To avoid complications associated with ground navigation links, this civilian drone will follow a flight path determined with the help of an app beforehand. "A smartphone app lets users select points on a map that they want to photograph, and the drone automatically launches itself, takes the picture, and comes back." The emergence of civilian drones has opened legal questions in privacy law, and in cases where local police departments are buying expired military drones, some have called for reviews of the technology to determine whether its use constitutes an unreasonable search, which is prohibited by the Constitution.